James Buchanan’s Activist Blunder

President James Buchanan’s critics rightly condemned him during the secession crisis of 1860-’61 — but they did so for exactly the wrong reason. The naysayers blasted the president for passiveness in the face of disunion, for failing promptly to reinforce endangered federal forts in the South. True, the president retreated from sending reinforcements — except for a few critical days around the New Year. At that moment, a sudden burst of irresponsible activism shrunk his record of passivity to comparative unimportance.

In October 1860, before any state had seceded, Buchanan’s chief general, Winfield Scott, urged him to send troops, food and armaments to vulnerable military outposts located on potential rebel terrain, including the forts around the harbor in Charleston, S.C. Scott’s plea swelled into a popular clamor as South Carolina’s declaration of secession neared. According to the logic for a preventative federal move, consolidating and resupplying the forts would call secessionists’ bluff, isolate South Carolina from other Southern states and devastate disunion sentiment inside even that flighty state.

Library of CongressJames Buchanan, ca. 1860

Buchanan rightly doubted this logic. He feared that federal military intervention might throw other slaveholding states into South Carolina’s unyielding hands. He knew that beyond South Carolina, most Southerners questioned whether President-elect Abraham Lincoln posed a real threat to slavery, and thus doubted the expediency of disunion. But most doubters also accepted the right of secession, and thus would deplore federal military enforcers’ menace to white citizens’ liberty. Fury at a president who deployed military “coercion,” thereby allegedly “enslaving” southern citizens, would be immense. Dispatching reinforcements before any state beyond South Carolina had decided on disunion might thus empower the rebels and drive more states out of the Union.

Buchanan preferred to stall on sending reinforcements, secure an informal truce on the forts, use a peaceable interregnum to seek a Union-saving compromise and leave Lincoln the climactic choice after his successor’s inauguration in early March 1861. In early December, Buchanan reached an informal understanding with South Carolina’s congressmen: He would do nothing to strengthen his paltry several dozen federal soldiers in the Charleston area as long as the rebels did nothing to harm them.

Alas, Buchanan also did nothing to inform his commander in Charleston, Robert Anderson, about the truce. On Dec. 26, Anderson unknowingly shattered the presidential agreement. In the dead of night, he snuck his troops from Fort Moultrie, weakly guarding the entrance to Charleston harbor on land, to Fort Sumter, an imposing man-made island overseeing the center of the harbor. Enraged South Carolinians demanded that Buchanan repudiate Anderson, while enthralled Yankees demanded that he reinforce the heroic commander.

For 72 hours, the president wrung his hands. Then, at the exact moment when discretion was called for, he embraced activism: on the last day of the year, he ordered the military to send a relief ship to Anderson.

In Washington, Southerner legislators instantly heard of the president’s order. They feared that Buchanan had also ordered all other Lower South forts reinforced. They telegraphed their false suspicion to Charleston authorities, who sped the misinformation to Gov. Joseph Brown in Georgia. The governor in turn wired the misconception to other Lower South governors, who secretly conspired to seize almost a dozen Lower South federal installations during the first half of January.

All this military furor occurred before any state except South Carolina had seceded and during the very days when Lower South voters and convention delegates were deciding on disunion. Thanks to Buchanan’s activism, at this precarious juncture the issue swerved from the expediency of secession to the right to deter federal “coercers” and to the patriotism of the brave boys who stood up to the “invasion.” Amidst that uproar, many previously uncertain Lower South voters enthusiastically embraced disunion, helping to propel six southern states toward South Carolina.

Library of CongressFiring on the “Star of the West” from the South Carolina battery on Morris Island, January 10, 1861.

The subsequent sailing of Buchanan’s relief ship, the Star of the West, was as disastrously timed as the decision to send her. The ship puffed out of New York toward Charleston on Jan. 5, bearing 200 soldiers and a six-months’ supply of meat. Hours after the ship left, Buchanan heard that Anderson needed no reinforcements. But in those days before wireless communication, it was too late. On Jan. 9, minutes after the Star entered Charleston harbor with its unneeded cargo, the first shots of the Civil War forced her departure, with nothing landed. The rout indicated the remote chance of ever successfully reinforcing Fort Sumter.

After he defied the odds at the most dubious instant, Buchanan relapsed into wiser passivity. In late January, new truces postponed further hostilities. On March 4, Buchanan handed the stalemate to Abraham Lincoln.

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Lincoln’s subsequent politic choice of the time and way to reinforce Fort Sumter highlighted Buchanan’s impolitic aggression. Buchanan never knew whether Anderson needed supplies until the unnecessary shipment had been sent. Lincoln, in contrast, found out exactly when Anderson would require aid. Buchanan fretted about his choices for a short 72 hours after Dec. 26; Lincoln weighed his alternatives for a long month after March 4. Buchanan never informed Confederate authorities of what was coming, and thus fostered false rumors about a dozen ships sent to a dozen forts. Lincoln told the rebels that barring resistance, only peaceable materials would be landed at Fort Sumter, and thus fostered the possibility that rebels might not fire on incoming bread. Buchanan paid no heed to how his decision to resupply might change the Lower South’s imminent disunion decisions. Lincoln thought carefully about how his Sumter decree might alter Virginia’s imminent secession verdict. Ultimately, Buchanan’s recklessness helped to alienate the Lower South states. Lincoln’s shrewdness helped to save half the Upper South states.

These twin epics illuminate more than the contrast between our best and worst presidents. No matter how they militarily intervened to save vestiges of federal power on rebel territory, and thus symbolically save the Union, both Lincoln and Buchanan risked poisoning the issue in states that had not yet seceded. By sending iron to draw blood, both expanded the question from whether black slaves might be freed to whether white citizens might be killed. Many a reluctant rebel learned amidst the fort crises that he must proudly seize his rifle or shamefully tolerate federal “invasion.”

But the question remains: Wouldn’t the six other Lower South states have joined South Carolina in January in any case, even if Buchanan had prolonged his December stall on military intervention? Probably. In Florida and Mississippi, the military excitements could have only fattened the secessionists already huge majorities. But elsewhere, the aftermath of Buchanan’s Star of the West decision just may have deflected the verdict. Especially in closely contested Georgia and Louisiana, public uproars may have boosted the secessionists to their razor-thin victories.

The history that did not happen must remain uncertain. But the history that did happen clarifies why secessionism survived its early southern doubters. The $64,000 question is often thought to be, why did the South’s vast majority of non-slaveholders decide to fight to the death for slavery? But the better question is, when did the South’s vast majority of reluctant prewar rebels decide to become ferocious Confederates? Buchanan’s decision to send the Star of the West provides the answer: Yankee military interventions turned many southern white men’s thoughts to routing Yankee “invaders.” For the ill-timed first wave of this ominous transformation, Buchanan’s blundering activism must bear a measure of blame.

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One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, Americans went to war with themselves. Disunion revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.